1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to control devices having user profiles associated therewith, and more specifically to a control device, such as a remote control device, having a profile selector for selecting a customizable user profile and a profile indicator for indicating which profile is selected.
2. Background Art
Home entertainment and home entertainment systems are becoming increasingly more feature packed, sophisticated, and complex. While once a television set could only receive two or three channels, cable and satellite systems now deliver hundreds of channels at the click of a button. What's more, video and audio content is now delivered in surround sound stereo with high definition pictures.
With the multitude of channel options now available, it is sometimes cumbersome for a family member to decide what to watch. Rather than having to browse through hundreds of channel listings to pick a desired program, people generally tend to gravitate towards a select few channels. In other words, one family member may to prefer to generally watch a few sports and local channels, while another family member prefers to watch movie and music channels.
To accommodate these differing tastes, receiver boxes with channel guide preferences have been developed. With one of these receiver boxes, a user may program a channel guide to include only those channels that match his particular tastes. When selecting the channel guide option from a general menu, the user may then select a preference list to show only the desired channels.
The problem with this particular system is threefold: First, it is time consuming to pull up the programmed channel guide. Generally, the user must first activate a general menu, then select a preference option, then select his particular preference list. The process requires the user to hit multiple buttons and view multiple screens on the television or monitor.
Second, to determine which particular user guide is active at any one time, the prior art system requires the user to activate the general menu, thereby requiring information to be displayed on the screen. Displaying this information often interferes with the video and audio that is currently being displayed, as the video generally gets reduced in size to accommodate the additional information. There is no quick way to determine which profile is active without interrupting the broadcast.
Third, this prior art solution is only tailored to channel guide. While the prior art systems are effective for customizing channel guides, other features, like show suggestions, viewing preferences, and recorded programs are generally not customizable.
There is thus a need for an improved device for quickly and easily selecting and displaying programmed preferences.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.